Bavarian Bugout
I think it is relatively safe to say that everyone who has served in the military has done something seemingly benign in the course of their duties that unexpectedly blew up (figuratively…but I suppose it could also be literally) into a colossal mess.
Maybe it’s grabbing the wrong file off your desk and shredding very important, time sensitive paperwork resulting in a missed resupply mission, or trusting the Afghan National Army to not sell the water bottles you secured and provided to them delaying a major counter-insurgency Op.
Sometimes shit happens…and sometimes you’re lucky enough to not get burned when it does. That is exactly the case in the story shared with me by Douglas Bannerman, M.M.M.; CD who hales from Perth, Ont.
Thank you Douglas; I think many people will be able to relate, but without a doubt you guys are in the running for one of the largest “Stand To” in CAF/NATO history.
All the best,
John
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Comm Sqn Lahr, telephone crew. Late Friday afternoon, mid 70s, a contractor cut through an old French hundred pair cable between the North and Centre Marguerite. It was raining, late October and my co worker and I had to splice it after finding a huge, muddy rain filled hole as the contractor had high tailed it when they realized what they had done. It was a priority repair as several security and secure lines were in that run.
I must digress and explain that to finish the repair, we had to ring out the cable at each end which was done with one of us going down the 66AQ blocks with a battery operated buzzer and the other following down on the other end with his butt telephone. As we did this dozens of times, it was simply a matter of dragging the contacts of each down each block in unison and we could tell that all splices were good.
Cold, wet, tired, muddy and miserable, we finished just before midnight. On our way home up the B3 to our home in Niederschopfhiem, we remarked on the more than normal headlights going south towards Lahr at that time of night, but in our cold miserable state we didn't think much more about it. We each got home, had supper, a warm bath and after sleeping in, enjoyed the weekend with our wives and good German beer.
Monday morning we arrived at work to find our Sgt extremely upset with us for not showing up for the bugout Friday night because it wasn't a drill but had come down from Rhienmain HQ as real and Lahr was in the ready state and 4CMBG had deployed to their lager area. We were confused as we had been working till midnight Friday and had gone beyond what we thought we should have been done because of some stupid contractor and he shouldn't be upset and he knew what we were doing because he sent us out to repair the line even though it was raining, and he didn't like us, we were only low ranking Cpls and no the alerters never woke us up etc, etc, etc, wah, wah, wah. (I was airforce trained at that time).
After our Sgt calmed down a bit he told us that the upper echelons at the Caserne and Rhienmain were in a bit of a tizzy because the Americans said that they hadn't initiated the alarm and we hadn't set it off locally either and our generals were concerned about the cost of the bugout if it wasn't real let alone the embarrassment. He then tasked us to go to the line records and determine where the alert pairs were to see what could have set it off. To our consternation, the two pairs used for the incoming line went through the cable that we had just repaired Friday night and were side by each. We then realized that when we slid our buzzer and butt phone down the terminals, we must have shorted out the two pairs and set off the alarm.
As our Sgt was standing over our shoulders furiously smoking his cigar as we were troubleshooting, and was privy to the situation, he also realized that his career was in jeopardy also as he was responsible for us. The three of us, with very white faces and trembling hands, decided not to speak of this. We also redid all the cross connects so that those two pairs were separated by quite a few pairs in all the cables carrying that line. We did that very, very quickly. It's now been well over 40 years since that night, I feel that I can now relate this story.
I can just imagine how much that that depleted that years CFE budget.
Douglas Bannerman, M.M.M.; CD
Perth, Ont.